The Man With No Name

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Ok, really, is Krugman just being playful here? The second paragraph appears to be exactly the point of the first paragraph. Bivens etc are probably arguing that the pump-priming probably should be considered a requirement. Of course, things have been messed up for so long that I doubt anything outside of bubble activity would be seen as jump-starting.

In another piece, Bivens notes that the usual suspects are now moving the goalposts, conceding that the stimulus is producing growth but saying that itâ€™s not â€œgenuineâ€ growth because â€¦ it was caused by the stimulus. Ahem. Actually, the whole rationale for fiscal stimulus â€” a rationale you can derive from models with all the intertemporal maximizing stuff, if you like â€” is that it puts resources that would otherwise be unemployed to work. If you do that, youâ€™ve helped the economy; thereâ€™s no distinction between genuine and artificial employment.

OK, now for the bad news. What weâ€™d really like to see isnâ€™t just successful job creation; weâ€™d like to see â€œpump-primingâ€ or â€œjump-startingâ€ â€” that is, weâ€™d like to see stimulus jolting the economy into self-sustaining growth. Itâ€™s important to understand that this isnâ€™t required to make stimulus worthwhile â€” itâ€™s neither a prediction of the standard models nor a part of the basic welfare argument for stimulus. But it would be nice if it happened.

Using this data, they determined that the physical attractiveness of a potential mate was more important to men than women. And men were less likely than women to think that their own lack of attractiveness â€” based both on a self assessment and the ratings of others â€” should stand in the way of a date with someone “hot.”

I love how dizzy that paragraph is. It’s like the writer doesn’t realize that sentence 1 explains sentence 2.

Maybe the craziest part is about a standup comedian with low self esteem. His co-workers at his day job make fun of him for being gay by putting a banana on his chair. He sits on it and squashes the banana and they all point and laugh. It’s like a scene out of some terrible children’s movie from Pakistan or somewhere that doesn’t quite translate. A banana? I don’t get it. Well, using The Secret this guy got better at telling jokes and everybody at work was afraid of him so they stopped playing crazy fruit tricks on him and I guess he probaly invented a banana-proof chair.

Oh Great God Of Cloned Selves, please clone my self and make some sort of automated spreadsheet thingamabob of this list of open mic nights in Portland/Vancouver and tell me what sequence I should hit them in and at what point I should have more songs written, Amen.

All right, I’ve had HSAs recommended to me multiple times. At first glance, they sound compelling. When you go to the doctors office, anything you owe – whether it’s a copay, or any out-of-pocket expenses left over after your health insurance covers stuff, etc – you can pay with a little debit card that comes with the HSA, rather than from cash from your wallet or bank account.

The advantage is that that money is tax-free. It’s still your money, but if it’s money that you put into the account, then that money is money you don’t have to pay taxes on at the end of the year, like an IRA.

And in following years, it acts just like an IRA – it builds tax free. And on top of that, I think that you even get the money back after you retire tax-free, like a Roth IRA, although I might be wrong on that count.

But man, is it ever frustrating to try and sign up for one. Because for one thing, I thought it was like signing up for a bank account, and all you have to do is prove you have a compatible health insurance program (and I do, at least in terms of it being a relatively high-deductible individual health plan).

I check online and I only find offers for HSAs that are hooked up to brand new health plans from company names I’ve never heard of. That just seems all sketchy.

I called my health insurance company (Regence BCBS, who I’ve been largely happy with), and they offer one, but it’s for a plan with a higher deductible than my own, when I’m already technically eligible. I don’t like that either.

So I’m about ready to give up on it… so much for HSAs being some kind of health insurance solution. Crappily marketed.

Update: I got more details from my health insurance company. It’s for a higher deductible than my own. The benefits are worse. The entire cost of doctors visits are my responsibility to pay, applied to my deductible, unlike how currently a lot gets covered before my deductible is exhausted. And the premium would only save me $40/month. The extra expenses would more than eat up both the premium savings and tax advantage, by far. What a dumb scheme.

I love this story from this article about more Sondheim musicals being possibly adapted to the screen.

When asked if he was willing to tear apart those great scores too, Mr. Sondheim said, â€œOh yeah,â€ and described a gift from the librettist Peter Stone that now sits on his desk. It is in fact a slab of stone; carved into it are the words â€œNothing is written in stone.â€

Responses started pouring in over the next 24 hours, and it looks like a major fiasco. A bug embedded in Quickbooks that is in both QB2006 and QB2007.

The worst part, Intuit hasn’t posted a fix yet. Which means that come Monday, thousands more people are going to open Quickbooks and lose all the data on their Desktops.

If anyone manages to read this before they open Quickbooks, type this in your Terminal:

defaults write com.intuit.QuickBooks2006 QBCheckForUpdatesKey NO

It’s Quickbooks checking for an update that triggers the bug, and Quickbooks does it automatically upon launch. If you turn that off, you’re protected (although, be sure not to click “Check For Updates” from your menus).

In the meantime, I’m watching it spread. Right now it’s on the front page of tuaw.com and others are certain it will end up making national news.